Timur giving orders to the General Assembly for a campaign against Georgia, whilst receiving Mutahartan, Emir of Erzinjan in Armenia
Illustrated Folio from the Zafarnama of Sharaf Al-Din 'Ali Yazdi

Mughal India, circa 1595 - 1600 A.D.

Gouache on paper

180 by 97 mm; leaf: 280 by 200mm

Inscribed: "work of Tulsi, principal portraits by Madhav"; folio 390, painting no.21

Provenance

Imperial Library of Emperor Akbar
Private collection that has been in England since the 1940s

The artist attributions, in red at the bottom of the page, give the names of Tulsi and Madhav, both senior artists of the royal atelier. Verma, S.P., Mughal Painters and their Work, New Delhi, 1994, pp. 367-70, records thirty-one paintings by Tulsi, whom he describes as an orthodox and skilled painter. Madhav, however, is considered an important Mughal painter. Abu’l Fazl lists him as "one of the leading painters of Akbar’s court” (ibid., p.234) and a miniature in the British Museum is signed “Ustad [master] Madhav". Of the thirty-eight works listed by Verma, fifteen are portraits and it was for this he was employed on the Razmnama of 1582-4. The text of this folio is found in Maulana Sharaf al-din ‘Ali Yazdi, Zafar Nameh, ed. Muhammad ‘Abbasi, Tehran, Shamsi 1336/1957, vol. 1, p. 74

Other leaves from this manuscript are in the collection of Cornell University, U.S.A. and in private collections in England and America.